Product Description

Being happy doesn't have to be hard, says prominent personal coach Laura Berman Fortgang. We each possess an internal compass that expresses our individual wisdom and points to the things that would most fulfill us. Personal and professional satisfaction, Fortgang believes, comes from tapping into this wisdom.

In Living Your Best Life, she offers ten tried-and-true strategies that help us to access our own inner knowledge to achieve what she calls a "best life"-a life that awaits all of us, in which gains come more easily because we've learned to honor our true desires and work with our individual talents rather than exhausting our energy on a traditional model of achievement. Her techniques focus on asking ourselves what we really want instead of frenetically trying to "have it all." We learn to ask questions that move us forward, not backward, to discover our own unique "lucrative purpose," and to design a "magnet" life plan that draws to us the more rewarding existence we deserve.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #176187 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-13
• Released on: 2002-05-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 203 pages

From Library Journal
com, believes that an intuitive approach is the best way to get to one's "happy place" in work as in life. She advocates a "Reckoning, Doing, and Being" process, where "Reckoning" is learning cognitive tricks to decrease negative thoughts; "Doing" is coming up with and carrying out action plans; and "Being" is identifying and working with intuitive processes. Also like Whyte, Fortgang's approach is a variation on the "Do what you love and the money will follow" philosophy. Unlike Whyte, however, Fortgang doesn't weave a prose poem for readers to meander through; instead, she offers practical exercises and checklists, dos and don'ts, and, despite her sometimes New-Agey ideals, very concrete methods that readers can use to change their lives. She points out that people don't often know what will make them happy (a fact that a lot of self-help books ignore), and she gives suggestions on how to identify exactly what that certain something might be. For all public libraries.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
A brilliantly written, indispensable guide that touches and expands the very best of our hearts, minds, and spirits. -- Harold Bloomfield, M.D., Author of Making Peace with Your Past and How to Survive the Loss of a Love

Beware-this thought-provoking book will put you on a one-way path to a more creative and fulfilling life. -- Kyle MacLachlan - Actor

Fortgang generously offers glorious, refreshing guidance to help us each find our unique path in life. -- Jennifer Louden, author of The Woman's Comfort Book

Fortgang's Wisdom Access Questions have the makings of brilliance-simple, easy to use, hugely effective, and humblingly obvious. -- Judy George, founder and CEO, Domain

Laura helps you organize information... so you can move your life forward in positive ways. I can't recommend this enough!" -- Julia Sweeney, Actress

About the Author
Laura Berman Fortgang is the author of Take Yourself to the Top and a popular speaker. Her national media appearances include The Oprah Winfrey Show, and she has been profiled in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Glamour.

Customer Reviews

A must read for women in business.
Definitely on my recommended book list. A must read for women in business.

Susan Bock
The Success Coach for Women in Business
www.SusanBockSolutions.com

THIS WOMAN IS DOING A GREAT JOB!!!!!
I read this book at a time when I didn't know if I was coming or going! Although it didn't get me the ideal job, help me lose 30 pounds in 3 weeks or buy real estate no-money-down, it did help get me in touch with an old friend : my own inner voice!!!

Not particularly realistic or helpful
According to the author everyone has a built-in "blueprint for life." Her job and the reader's job is to discover what that is. But the discovery process is decidedly non analytical; trying to understand the past - the why's of this world - is non constructive, if not negative, in this venture. The reader, patient, or client ( the author runs a life coaching business ) must be future oriented, focusing on "wants" and not "shoulds." One should rely upon intuition and feelings far more so than "information." Furthermore, all areas of life are equally open to this approach: career, relationships, etc. Details on a micro level are irrelevant or get in the way.

Like virtually every so-called "self-help" book, the author maintains that the person in need of help is the primary obstacle to success. It is up to him or her to make the life-changing transformation, with of course the possible help of a life coach. The author gives the example of deciding on the day on which she was to be admitted to a mental facility, after five years of depression and therapy, to suddenly change her life. Apparently, multi-year depression is some sort of superficial malady that can be cast aside in a heartbeat, if only properly motivated. Also in keeping with the genre, the author admits to no social or economic structures or conditions that can and do present very real obstacles in attaining success in life. Issues like class, vastly unequal resources, or power dynamics apparently do not exist in the author's world. Being down-sized from a thirty year career is just another "opportunity" in life-coach speak, not a devastating blow that can be extremely difficult to overcome for many realistic reasons.

Granted it is possible to think one's situation to death. Analysis can be paralysis. But is success in life merely identifying wants, adopting the right attitudes, and getting out of the way to let it all happen? At one point, the author suggests that the "best life cannot help but find you." For many, life is just a bit more complicated despite efforts made that are least equal to any detailed in her book.

The target audience is not particularly clear. In one example, the author describes a supervisor becoming more effective by asking an employee "what" questions as opposed to "why" questions. That sounds like Mgt 101, not life transformation. In another case, a manager has "negative" guilt over firing an employee. When he realizes that he is helping the firm, apparently that constitutes "living your best life." And then there is the other extreme of the author going from admittance to a hospital to life coach and successful author in a matter of a few years.

The book is just overly simplistic. It makes both unreal, exaggerated claims and does not realistically examine life's complexities and the difficulties in assessing and solving problems. In that regard, it may actually perform a disservice. The book offers mostly life cheerleading, which may be exactly what some are looking for.